Yes, I mean that. Start here.. You might be wondering why I would be sending this to you when you have been reading email posts / emails for a while now. But the truth is, you may need to come back here a few times on your journey of anxiety elimination. And hey, that’s ok, for most this is a process and not an event. It certainly was for me.
You will surely find some hidden gems in this audio (transcript below of course).
Go jump in, the water’s beautiful 🙂
(After you finish this post make sure you check out our previous post – “Can you Relate To This?”)
Ben
Transcript
Hey, it’s Ben. How are you doing? Okay, so I’m just sitting on my back deck. It’s a beautiful, beautiful sunny day. The sun is shining and it’s nice and warm. I just wanted to do an awesome recording for you today. You may have heard this one before, but I wanted to share it because when I heard it again six, 12 months ago, I can’t remember how long ago it was. It was really, it really had some big impact for me so I want to share it with you today.
That has to do with this, you as a person who are currently struggling and suffering with, experiencing, however you describe it; anxiety, panic, difficulty challenge in your life, agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, whatever it is that you’re struggling with in your life right now, I wanted to share this because it’s very important.
Your current standpoint where you currently are, where you’re currently experiencing these side effects and these symptoms, and all of these things that go along with, I’m just going to throw everything under the blanket of anxiety as I normally do but all of this stuff that you’re struggling with is currently where you are, it’s currently your standpoint. As you stand there, as you sit there and you look around at your life, you see things to be afraid of.
You feel things to be afraid of. You are aware of things that feel like loss in your life, you are aware of these things that you feel guilty about. You’re aware of these bodily symptoms that you’re experiencing. You’re aware of things of, I can’t go here and I can’t go there because when I do, I experience panic attacks. I can’t get on to an aeroplane and I don’t want to go skiing because I don’t want to get onto a chair lift.
These are the types of things that I experienced, and so I’m making the assumption that you experience some of them as well. In fact, I know that you experience some of them as well. What happens is, is that as we go through this experience of living with anxiety, our life kind of shrinks, like it just gets smaller and smaller and smaller. The people that we want to spend time with gets smaller. The things that we’re able to do get smaller. The places that we’re able to go, it just gets smaller. In a lot of cases, for some people things get really, really, really bad. I know for me, I just couldn’t leave my house. It was just, it was excruciating. It took me so much work and effort to just psych myself up.
I remember I used to wake up in the morning and that would be - this was before I was experiencing agoraphobia, but it took me two hours to get to a place where I kind of felt somewhat normal to be able to carry on a conversation. That’s typically when I would return my business phone calls and start my work day and stuff.
A lot of people might say, “Hey look, I don’t have the luxury of being able to do that.” That’s totally okay, everyone has a different structure to their life. Everyone gets up at different times, everyone goes to bed at different times but the truth is, for me at the time, did I have the luxury of spending two hours in the morning before? No, I didn’t really have the luxury.
I can tell you that that timeframe that I needed to just kind of get myself to a bit of a normal place before I could interact with the world, well I look back at it now and I think, “Yeah.” I kind of created that luxury but the truth is, is that I needed it, like I really, really needed that time before I could interact with the world in any meaningful way.
What I wanted to tell you was this specifically, is you know where you are right now. You look around your world. You look around your life and you see these things. You see where you are right now and depending on when anxiety started for you, you could probably look back to a time, and I know I could and everyone is different, everyone’s experience is different but you can look back to a time when you didn’t experience anxiety the way that you’re currently experiencing it. Maybe it was just nonexistent for you.
You think back to your teenage years or to your early childhood years or your early 20s or whenever it was for you, when you did not experience any anxiety whatsoever and life was joyful.
I want you to take that, take that place of where you were at that time when you didn’t experience any, I want that to become your B, in other words, you’re currently at A experiencing all of this anxiety and life is what it is. It is the way you see it. You want B to be returning back to that, the youthful playfulness that you experienced as a child or as a teenager or whatever it was when life was just good in your mind.
You want that to be your end point. What’s important there is that you’re at A and you want to be at B, and you know, or maybe you don’t know, but you’re going to B. You’re not going back to anything, you’re definitely not going back to anything. There’s only forward movement in life. There is no going back, so we’re going forward. We’re going forward through anxiety, with anxiety currently where we are right now but what’s interesting is this, I live in Canada and there are some big separations between locations.
In other words, Canada is a big country, so for me to drive from Calvary to Toronto, which is about 4,000 kilometers, for me to make that drive, I know where I want to end up and I know where I’m starting from but I don’t know every turn and twist and left turn and right turn in the road. I don’t know all that stuff. I don’t know where all the stop lights are. I don’t know what the speed limit is between here and there.
I don’t know all of these different things but what happens is, is that if I just take one step in that direction, if I take another step in that direction, another step in that direction, if I just move a little bit forward, I can see a little bit further. Now, that old expression of, go as far as you can and you can see further, well as cheesy as it might sound, it’s totally true. That’s what I’m asking you to do. Is just take a step in the direction of B, take a step in the direction of moving in that, away from anxiety towards that peace that you’re looking for.
As you do that, as you start to take those steps, you’re going to notice different things. You’re going to start to feel stronger, you’re going to start to feel better. As you make those moves, you’re further and further away from anxiety. You’re closer and closer to what it is that you’re looking for, which is your B. So, I’m asking you I’m telling you right now. Start taking steps towards your B. You can do it you’re doing awesome, fantastic. Just keep on doing it. You’re stronger that you think and I believe in you.
(Now, make sure you check out our previous post - "Can you Relate To This?")
Have an awesome day.
Ben